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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

"The new findings challenge the “food desert” hypothesis..."

Fat Head » Food Deserts and Grand Plans: "An analysis of a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults reveals that access to healthy foods in a supermarket does not hinder Americans’ consumption of empty calories. In fact, the study found, U.S. adults buy the bulk of their sugar-sweetened beverages and nutrient-poor discretionary foods at supermarkets and grocery stores.
The new findings challenge the “food desert” hypothesis, which posits that a lack of access to supermarkets and grocery stores in some communities worsens the obesity crisis by restricting people’s access to healthy foods...

As part of their never-ending quest to create a better society by spending other people’s money and/or restricting other people’s freedoms, The Anointed decided to take on the (ahem) “problem” of food deserts some years ago. And boy, the Grand Plan they came up with to fix it is such a fine example of The Anointed in action, I decided to write a full post on the topic. I haven’t discussed The Anointed for a while, so I’ll start with a brief review of how they operate. This is my crib-sheet version of Thomas Sowell’s terrific book The Vision of The Anointed: The Anointed identify a problem in society. The Anointed propose a Grand Plan to fix the problem. Strangely, the Grand Plan nearly always requires spending other people’s money and/or restricting other people’s freedom to make their own decisions. Because they are so supremely confident in their ideas, The Anointed don’t bother with proof or evidence that the Grand Plan will actually work. In fact, they cheerfully ignore any evidence that the Grand Plan won’t work. If possible, The Anointed will use government coercion to impose the Grand Plan on other people (for their own good, of course). Because the problem they’ve identified is The Bad, The Anointed assume whatever Grand Plan they design to fix it is The Good. Therefore, anyone who opposes the Grand Plan is opposing Good itself … which can only mean those people are either evil or stupid. If the Grand Plan fails (which it usually does), The Anointed will never, ever, ever admit the Grand Plan was wrong. They will instead conclude that 1) the plan was good, but was undermined by people who are evil or stupid, or 2) the plan didn’t go far enough … which means we need to do the same thing again, ONLY BIGGER...

In other words, the Grand Plan isn’t working for the same reason those wunnerful, wunnerful fruits and vegetables weren’t available in “food deserts” in the first place: THE LOCALS AREN’T INTERESTED IN BUYING THEM. HOW DID YOU NOT SEE THIS COMING A HALF-BILLION DOLLARS AGO, YOU @#$%ING MORONS?! Here’s the really fun part: The USDA is aware of research negating the hypothesis that people don’t buy fruits and vegetables because they “struggle” to find them. "